Balancing to 11th, a Counterbalance SCG Phoenix Report

[MJL]

Long-time reader, first-time poster. Figured I'd contribute a report, after reading so many over the years.
http://www.azmagicplayers.com/articles/balancing-to-11th-an-scg-phoenix-legacy-open-report-part-1/
The second half should be out by Monday.

Everyone told me Counterbalance was dead, good thing I'm not a good listener.
Hope you'all enjoy.

[MJL]

The next part of the tourney report is up:
http://www.azmagicplayers.com/articles/balancing-to-11th-an-scg-phoenix-legacy-open-report-part-2/

Hope you all like it.

[TBryant23]

Type faster! Can't wait for the rest of this report. I got into Legacy because of counterbalance. My metagame is flooded with Maverick and I have had a horrible time beating it.

[MJL]

Part 3 is up;
http://www.azmagicplayers.com/articles/balancing-to-11th-an-scg-phoenix-legacy-open-report-part-3/

[door]

Very well written, thanks a lot!
Looks like you lost only to your own mistakes, which means the next time you surely won't repeat them.
The deck looks solid. Will try it defenitely.

[TBryant23]

Great article. I really enjoyed the first part explaining the card choices. I absolutely agree with lingering souls, but have never been able to hammer out a list. Only question I have is why not go -1 Island, -1 Karakas +1 plains, +1 swamp? I understand your argument in the report for so many duals, but it really seems that 1 basic of each type would be very strong against wasteland decks like Maverick which is a pretty poopy match-up w/o drawing a lot of removal, which you seemed to do.

[MJL]

I guess the lands question can best be summarized through example.
Say your hand is Top, Counterbalance, Counterspell, Swords, Jace, Plains, Snapcaster.
This hand is unkeepable. You can cast none of your spells except Swords, nor can you expect to even if you happen to Top into a land. Replace the Plains with basic Island. That hand is decent and not a mulligan.
Now lets add an Underground Sea or Tundra in place of the Snapcaster. Lets say your opponent is running Wasteland (this is apparently where basics are good). If you lead with Plains so you don't get wasted you cannot resolve Counterbalance on turn 2, nor can you cast Counterspell. If you lead with Underground Sea you could potentially play your double blue spells on turn 2, but Wasteland will get you, leaving you 2 lands away from playing anything else in your hand, because the Plains is not a blue source.
This only gets magnified when you consider that your best lines of play tend to be Counterbalance backed by Spell Pierce or Brainstorm, or Counterspell. Or Snapcaster into Counterspell. These all require multiple blue mana. The idea that your playing around Wasteland by not giving them targets is kind-of dumb when your drastically impeding your own options to do it.
The basic swamp is even worse, you usually on fetch underground sea when your gonna cast one of the four black spells in your main deck, all of which are single black.
The idea that fetching basics is good against Wasteland is true, but not when your deck requires double color mana on turn 2, and triple colored mana on turn 3. Also the amount of times that you want to fetch basic Island is far higher than the number of times you will want a basic plains or swamp, so how exactly are you to fetch your basics, the fetch land suite that should be used will only have 4 ways to get each respective basic. It seems like an awful lot of trade-off especially because Wasteland will always have targets against you.

This deck casts different spells at different times than the Soulblade list Martell played, having a similar landsuite doesn't make much sense.

[TBryant23]

I see your logic, perhaps I've been going about building my lists wrong.

[alphastryk]

Great report & decklist. I saw your list in the coverage and played something like 73/75 in Birmingham, but got hit with a bunch of bad matchups. I definitely like the direction the deck is going, and I will continue to work on this style of Counterbalance deck.

I wish I'd seen this report before then, but it's still grea to read. I definitely want to cut Karakas as well - it never did anything I wanted.